Plastic-bag ban would hurt California workers: Letters

SB 270 doesn’t live up to any of the environmental credentials its supporters thought. It eliminates manufacturing and recycling-industry jobs and provides a big political handout from our citizens to the California Grocers Association.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, plastic bags make up only 0.4 percent of the U.S. municipal solid-waste stream. Recent studies also demonstrate that plastic bags typically makes up less than 1 percent of all litter collected. These facts raise serious concerns regarding SB 270’s environmental benefits.

The legislation also exempts heavier, thicker-gauge plastic and paper bags, which require more resources to produce and take longer to break down. SB 270 would also cripple the state’s plastic bag manufacturing and recycling industry and imperil nearly 2,000 California jobs. I know because Lynwood is home to a number of these workers.

SB 270 is also a special-interest grocer cash grab. No money from SB 270 will be dedicated to any environmental program. Sacramento leaders need to focus on the critical kitchen-table issues facing real people, not special-interest bag schemes.

— Aide Castro, Lynwood The letter writer is the mayor of Lynwood

Support the good guys by letting them carry guns

Re “Deadly rampage” (May 25):

Notice that in the Santa Barbara rampage, of the three persons attacked with a knife, all three died? Of the eight attacked with a pistol, only three died; and of the four attacked with a car, none died.

In England, when pistols became common, the number of murders resulting from highway robbery went down. Pistols were an equalizer. They were small, light and required almost no training compared to the skill needed to survive a sword fight.

Mass public shooters generally stop only when someone shoots back. The cure for a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Police response time usually results in good guns arriving a dozen casualties too late. And that is the argument for individual citizens to carry concealed weapons. On a purely random basis, an armed citizen might be present when the mass public killer begins to shoot. Citizens who carry pistols with a conceal permit have an infinitesimal crime rate, and mass public shootings decrease in severity and occurrence as the rate of concealed carry increases.

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Killers love gun-free zones and all other forms of gun control. Gun control handicaps only the good guys. Just for this once, might the Daily News support the good guys? Arm them.

— William O. Felsman, Woodland Hills

Hollywood shares in blame for Isla Vista violence

I cannot help but wonder why Hollywood, with all of the extreme violence that it promotes and presents on the screen and in the home, gets a free pass when blame for the Isla Vista shootings is passed around.

— Jesse Ellis Fox, Burbank

Talk more important than actions? Pols sure think so

Re “Are words now more important than actions?” (Question of the Week, June 1):

Of course talk trumps actions. How do politicians get elected? By talking. Then, after getting elected ,the safest way to stay on the job is to take little action — just talk a lot and say what people want to hear.

The guy behind the scenes doing the work is not as visible as the guy at the mike.